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BACCHUS CAME BACK: The food-and-drink equation tumbled toward the latter when Jana Maclagan chaired the Vancouver International Wine festival’s traditional Bacchanalia kickoff gala recently. As Hotel Vancouver executive chef Cameron Ballendine began sending out five courses, including an entrée of venison with beets and liquorice oats, stemware-laden tables warned that 10 wines would accompany the growlies. Lashings of festival-theme-nation Italy’s Valdo Numero 10 Brut Metodo Classico NV got attendees bubbling. Taylor Fladgate’s 20-year-old Portuguese tawny port eventually settled their tummies. In between, they swigged on vintages from Australia, Croatia and Spain, two from France and three more from Italy. Thus encouraged, they bid on the record $180,000 worth of red and white wines Howard Blank auctioned from a podium surrounded by all-white hydrangeas, orchids and roses. •

ON THE GAS: Auto racers know that going a little slower into corners lets you come out faster overall and with greater control. That’s second nature for Rize Alliance Properties CEO Will Lin, 49, who pilots a Porsche 911 GT3 in U.S. events and a Mazda Miata at Mission Raceway Park. Such track technique paid off in the case of The Independent, the near-$200-million, 258-unit Rize development Acton Ostry Architects designed for Broadway and Kingsway. It was 2005 when Lin paid $18 million for a site likely worth $45 million today. But recession and neighbourhood opposition to the project’s height delayed city hall approval until September, 2014. When it came, Lin hit the accelerator. He has yet to win a Porsche GT3 Cup event. In business firsts, though, The Independent is Lin’s debut undertaking with Ayala Land, a Manila-based global property developer with a real-estate market cap of US$11 billion. As for that 51-to-49 per-cent relationship continuing, Lin said: “It depends on how this one does on presale.” That in turn depends on another first for Rize: alliance with marketer Bob Rennie.

It is almost impossible to understand a parent’s overwhelming grief when a child disappears. But when the abductor is the child’s other parent and the destination is another country, the situation is complicated — especially for the child, whose loyalties are torn and whose world is turned upside down. Into the morass of love and hate that defines parental abduction, governments and courts have tried to find ways to ensure the child’s best interests are protected. In 1980, Canada helped develop a multilateral treaty called the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which is founded on the belief that children have the right to have access to both of their parents. The convention has been ratified by more than 90 countries.

ALL DRESSED UP: The sun was hot and Hastings Racetrack fast for the recent sixth-annual Deighton Cup dress-up party. Hundreds of younger folk attended what producers Dax Droski, Jordan Kallman, Brett Turner and Tyson Villeneuve’s called “a good old fashioned day at the races.” In fact, racing provided the day’s only cloud when three-year-old gelding Skimming The Sky was euthanized after falling at the first-race finish line. Otherwise, $75-and-up attendees were promised “the most sophisticated and playful event of the summer.” That was an all-genders fashion parade, where enough stogies were smoked and champagne and mint julep glasses drained to delight 1867-1875 saloon keeper (Gassy) Jack Deighton, for whom the party is named.

FASHION FIRST: Hats off to Jamal Abdourahman, who seldom doffs his own mini fedora. He’s the Djibouti-born 52-year-old who launched Vancouver International Fashion Week in 2001 with then-Vancouver Sun fashion contributor Jeanne Beker as MC. Some models sweltered in city designer Roxanne Nikki’s bulky faux-fur jackets. Others, smoking outside, shivered in nothing more than their birthday suits with garments airbrushed on by artist Martin Armand. Nudies and the word International are long gone, and the event has moved from the Vancouver Convention Centre to the Chinese Cultural Centre. It kicked off there Tuesday with a metaphorical bang if not the kind that strews the centre’s Pender Street sidewalk with firecracker casings.

Weddings are a stressful time, just ask any couple married in their hometown. There's a lot of decision making, checking and double-checking lists; and that's not to mention the one big worry every Vancouver bride has, will it rain on my wedding day? That's why one in five Canadian couples is now opting for a sun-destination wedding in places like Mexico and the Caribbean, according to industry sources.

LOS CABOS, Mexico: Far from the bikini-lined beaches and booze-fuelled bars of Cabo San Lucas, I lie elbow deep on the sand of some remote Mexican dunes waiting for the sun to near the horizon, a growing nursery of baby turtles squirming beside me.

I still remember the first bowl of shrimp soup (caldo de camaron) that I had at Bismarck Restaurant in La Paz, a laid-back small Mexican city on the Sea of Cortez in Baja California, some 25 years ago.

The first thing Micheal Plante needed to do after deserting the Hells Angels on Jan. 21, 2005 was decompress. Plante, who had just spent many dangerous months infiltrating the notorious biker gang for police, was holed up in a secure location in the Lower Mainland with his girlfriend, guarded 24/7 by police.

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